Some of them deny both kinds of resurrection. Others affirm the resurrection of knowledgeable souls but not ignorant ones. All three positions were held by their Second Teacher, Abū Nasr al-Fārābī. Their views on this are so inconsistent that it is clear they have not found the truth concerning it.

Through their specious arguments, they have led astray countless people affiliated with religious communities—so many that only Allah knows their number.

Since they entirely lack that through which happiness and deliverance from misery are attained, their prescriptions concerning morality, conduct, and governance are as Allah Most High says:

“They know only the outward aspects of this worldly life, while they are heedless of the Hereafter.”

As for the theoretical sciences they discuss, whatever is sound in them is beneficial in this world. As for “metaphysics,” they possess nothing of it through which salvation and happiness can be attained. Indeed, most of what they possess in this field is not knowledge established with certainty. The leading philosophers have explicitly stated that certainty is unattainable in metaphysics, and that discussion in this field proceeds only in terms of what is more probable and plausible. Thus, they have nothing but conjecture concerning it:

“And conjecture is no substitute for the truth.”

Their opposition to the messengers is therefore immense and glaring. Indeed, one of the eminent scholars versed in speculative theology, philosophy, hadith, and other disciplines was once asked, “What separates the prophets from the philosophers?”

He replied, “The blood-red sword.”

He meant that whoever follows their approach, seeking to reconcile their statements with what the messengers brought, becomes entangled, through sophistry and Qarmatian esotericism, in all manner of absurdities that no rational person would accept. Such was the approach of the authors of the Epistles of the Brethren of Purity and others like them. It is from this that